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The desert called so we pulled out the long boats and headed down the Baja way, first loading enough boats to take full advantage of both coasts, then cramming the truck full of every camping comfort it would take, right down to a hand-cranked margarita blender.

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Sean Morley knows a few things about going fast. He honed his forward stroke technique as a flatwater sprint racer on the British junior national team, but has made his biggest mark traveling far and fast in challenging conditions. He’s held speed records for crossing the Irish Sea, circumnavigating Vancouver Island, and paddling 4,500 miles around Great Britain and Ireland, solo.

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A private river trip on central Idaho’s mighty Selway has long been known as one of North America’s best, and most exclusive, ventures. Difficult access creates much of that challenging allure, as the Selway’s remote location compounds the scarcity of its private permits: The Forest Service issues only 62 to the lucky few of the thousands who apply in the annual lottery.

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“Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks offer some of the best paddling opportunities in the world for all abilities -- to live so near to these amazing rivers and yet be unable to experience them is a constant frustration for me and many other residents and visitors.”

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Last year, our readers were so impressed by the Trans-Territorial Canoe Expedition–a four-month, 2,600-mile canoe journey across Canada’s Northern Territories–that they voted it the Expedition of the Year at the 2013 C&K Awards. But for expedition-member Winchell Delano, crossing Canada’s far north from the Pacific Ocean to the Hudson Bay wasn’t enough. He is planning to go even bigger in 2015. Starting in January, Delano and five other paddlers (John Keaveny, Dan Flynn, Jarrad Moore, Adam Trigg, and Luke Kimmes) will canoe from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean over a period of nine months and cover a distance of approximately 5,200 miles. We caught up with Delano to get the details of the Rediscover North America expedition. C&K: Just the map of your expedition route is mind-boggling. Where did this idea come from? Winchell Delano: Part of your Expedition of the Year award included a $2,500 grant towards a future expedition. That is probably where everything started; that is, the incentive to plan something. Once the drive to plan the trip was in place, our goal was to try and surpass the previous undertaking in both distance and duration. In order to do so, we decided to orient

No. 1 Dad

Parenthood made B.C. photographer Dan Clark a waterman

An arduous backpacking trip on Canada’s Baffin Island with their three-month-old son left mountain guide Dan Clark and his wife, Alice Young Clark searching for an easier way to travel with children in the wilderness. “We tried car-camping in the frontcountry but it wasn’t our thing,” says Clark, a Kimberley, B.C.-based educator. After watching fellow Canadians Leanne Allison and Karsten Heuer’s film Finding Farley, which documents a cross-country family camping outdoor adventure, Clark the landlubber was convinced to try canoeing.

The family made their first canoe trip a 10-day spring break float down Utah’s Green River, with son Koby, then almost three years old, and daughter Ava Fei, nine months. That trip was an epiphany. “We were back in the wilderness,” says Clark. “A lot of parents think they can’t do that kind of stuff anymore once they have kids. For us canoeing was a totally new activity and we found what was important to us.”

A seed was sown. The next summer they spent three weeks on the Yukon River, and then in 2011 embarked on an ambitious six-week canoe journey in Prince William Sound, from Valdez to Whittier, AK. All this prepared the family for a 100-day trip last summer, from the Rocky Mountain town of Jasper, Alberta, to the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, Canada’s longest waterway.

It’s fitting that Dan and Alice have become inspirations themselves. An avid photographer, Clark decided to explore videography in producing an eight-minute film about the Alaska expedition. Last summer’s Mackenzie River 14-minute documentary, Have Kids Will Paddle, earned Clark a Waterwalker Film Festival award. “We both feel pretty deeply about the simplicity of being out and away,” says Clark. “There’s a constant reward—just being together is fantastic. At home we’re both working and looking after the kids…life’s busy and distracted. Out in the wilderness very simple.

“We don’t do the films for publicity,” he adds, “but it has been neat to see that people are being inspired. If we can convince some other folks to get out with their kids, that’s great.”